OWINGS MILLS, MD — With the Buffalo Bills beating the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-17, in the final AFC opening-round playoff game on Jan. 15, the top-seeded Ravens now know they will face the No. 4 seed Houston Texans in the divisional round at M&T Bank Stadium on Saturday, Jan. 20, at 4:30 p.m.
The No. 2 seeded Bills will host No. 3 seed Kansas City in the other divisional round AFC game, with the winners meeting in the AFC championship game on Sunday, Jan. 28, at 3 p.m.
The game against the Texans will be the Ravens’ first home playoff game since they suffered a stunning 28-12 loss to the Tennessee Titans as the AFC’s No. 1 seed in the 2019 playoffs.
It will also be a rematch of the season opener this year, won by the Ravens, 25-9, though both teams have changed significantly since.
That game, played at M&T Bank Stadium on Sept. 10, marked the first game in nine months for Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, and his first game in the new offensive system of first-year coordinator Todd Monken.
Jackson finished 17-for-22 for 169 yards and one interception. He also ran six times for 38 yards.
Ravens rookie Zay Flowers made an immediate impact in his NFL debut, with a game-high nine catches for 78 yards.
Cornerback Marlon Humphrey didn’t play in that game as he recovered from a foot injury, and neither did tight end Mark Andrews (quad) or edge rusher Kyle Van Noy, who was still two weeks away from signing with the Ravens. Van Noy has gone on to record a career-high nine sacks.
Both Humphrey (calf) and Andrews (ankle) are dealing with injuries this time around as well, as is Flowers (calf), and their status for the postseason opener is uncertain. Humphrey and Flowers did not practice last week and Andrews has missed the past six games. He is on injured reserve, but he returned to practice last week and the Ravens are optimistic that he could return at some point in the postseason.
On the other side, Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2023 draft, was making his first NFL start when Houston came to town in September. He has since emerged as the front-runner to win the league’s Offensive Rookie of the Year Award.
Stroud led the league in both passing yards per game (273.9) and touchdown-interception ratio (23 touchdowns, five interceptions. He joined Joe Montana (1989) and Tom Brady (2007) as the only players to accomplish that.
The Ravens kept the Texans out of the end zone in that game, holding Houston to three field goals. That proved to be a precursor for Mike Macdonald’s defense, as the Ravens led the league in scoring defense, allowing a season-low 16.5 points per game.
The Ravens led 7-6 at the half on the strength of a touchdown run by J.K. Dobbins — who suffered a season-ending injury in the game — and then pulled away in the second half. Justice Hill scored on a pair of 2-yard touchdown runs in the third quarter to open up a 22-6 lead. Hill’s second touchdown came five plays after the Ravens stuffed the Texans on fourth-and-1 in Houston territory.
Stroud finished 28-for-44 for 242 yards and was sacked five times. His passer rating of 78.0 turned out to be his second-lowest of the season.
Texans running back Devin Singletary, who led the team with 898 yards rushing this season, carried seven times for 15 yards in Week 1. Receiver Nico Collins, who finished the season with team-high totals of 80 catches for 1,298 receiving yards, had six catches for 80 yards against the Ravens.
Head coach John Harbaugh said the day after that game that the Texans “[are] going to win a lot of football games this year. Mark it down. You’ll see. That’s a good, young football team.”
He was proved correct. The Texans under first-year coach DeMeco Ryans and led by the ascending Stroud won three of their final four games and seven of their last 10 to finish 10-7 and pass fading Jacksonville to win the AFC South.
They then rolled past the fifth-seeded Cleveland Browns, 45-14, in their playoff opener to gain a rematch with the Ravens. Stroud threw for 274 yards and three touchdowns against the Browns, and his passer rating of 157.2 was his highest of the year. He has a rating of 100-plus in five of his past six games.
Meeting with the media at his weekly Monday news conference on Jan. 15, Harbaugh said his staff had been “dialed in” on the Texans ever since they had beaten the Browns, though they didn’t know for certain until several hours later that the Texans would be their opponent. Had the No. 7 seeded Steelers beaten the Bills, the Ravens would have hosted Pittsburgh instead.
Asked about the difference between the Texans of Week 1 and the Texans now, Harbaugh said, “They’re 17 games different. I’d say coaching and experience, all the things that a good team does that continues to improve throughout the season. … Obviously, they’re very well coached. They have really good young players [and] some veteran players as well. They’ve continued to improve.”
Of course, so, too, have the Ravens (13-4). They rolled to six straight wins — including back-to-back dominant wins against first-place San Francisco and Miami — to secure the AFC’s No. 1 seeding before resting several starters and dropping a 17-10 decision to Pittsburgh in the regular-season finale.
Despite having no game, the Ravens held practice four days last week, including a spirited workout at M&T Bank Stadium this past Saturday that was designed to keep the team in rhythm.
“We were running around fast [with] timing, execution, good spirits,” Harbaugh said. “It was cold and windy, and we had a sense of the stadium. … Just even driving down to the stadium, you felt that it’s like a game, because that’s what we do. We drive to the stadium for our home games. All of that, to me, helped us stay psychologically in the right place.”
They will do it all over again this Saturday, this time with their season on the line.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox